Marcos Cabral - Buried Alive Twice

Marcos Cabral - Buried Alive Twice
Of the many records released on L.I.E.S. since it launched five years ago, few have summed up the label's personality as well as Marcos Cabral's False Memories. Sprawling and sometimes brutal, the LP collected Cabral's early musical experiments, some of which he didn't remember making. Its jagged flow and chewed-up tape sound reignited an abrasive streak that Cabral would further explore on his harsh house records as Chemotex. With Buried Alive Twice, Cabral has nearly equalled False Memories, recreating that album's amateurish spirit with the caustic compounds he dabbled in as Chemotex.

Even for a label that epitomizes the idea of the raw analogue hardware jam, Buried Alive Twice is raw. There's an upfront quality that evokes the old punk rock method of recording right to the mixing board—these tracks don't sound like they've ever seen a computer. At its coarsest, Buried Alive Twice is hostile: "Shallow," for example, is a drum workout with a virulent acid line and hectic snare rolls that hiss like rattlesnakes. Those snares, resonant and cutting, are the LP's most distinctive sound—they feel like they might slice through your eardrums on "That's Not A Bathroom." It's this approach, uncomfortably close and piercing, that goes beyond lo-fi and sharpens common dance music devices into weapons.

What Buried Alive Twice has in texture it lacks in structure, but the unpredictability is part of the fun. The opener, "Mind Of Minolta," moves with a slouch, but the heaving basslines and high-pitched bleeps give it an explosive quality. It often sounds like Cabral is mixing volatile chemicals together and letting them fizz and foam all over the plodding drum track. There's a similar instability to "Not Alive Yet," where distorted speech snippets crudely phase in and out over another uneasy groove, while a coat of ugly fuzz slowly swallows the whole thing.

Buried Alive Twice isn't easy listening, and it's not supposed to be. A few of these tracks might work in a DJ set, but that seems beside the point. Rather than channel his destructive impulses into fiery dance music, Cabral's second LP lets them fester and blaze. Even if it was made in a whole different era from False Memories, Buried Alive Twice comes close to capturing what made that record such a wonderful anomaly. It's off-the-cuff, occasionally brilliant and punk as fuck.